life tastes good for young farmers.

The wooden butcher block of food that Mark Trealout and Laura Boyd put out for our visit to their Kawartha Lakes farmhouse is a thing of beauty.

Finger-sized slices of ham and free-form sausages, both made from their pigs, surround a bowl of whole-grain mustard. The ham was smoked at Len & Patti’s Butcher Block in nearby Lindsay. The sausages are homemade.

Cornmeal from their Amish neighbour Henry Hershberger is served as fried, cubed polenta. Raw green seeds (pepitas) from the couple’s kakai pumpkins are roasted with olive oil and seasoning salts.

There is organic artisan bread, bartered at a farmers’ market with St. John’s Bakery from Toronto. And there is butter made from the raw milk of a neighbour’s Guernsey cows. (It’s a gift – not for sale.)